Manuela Eilert and Norbert Hiller wanted to build a custom home in the Research Triangle area of North Carolina, where they had lived for 26 years. They had looked at more than a dozen houses, but didn't like any of them: The rooms and windows were too small, the ceilings low, and the floor plans inefficient.
"I was craving something that was more us," said Eilert, now 54, a retired human-resources director.
The problem was, their construction budget was no more than $1 million-and ideally closer to $500,000.
These days, it's more and more difficult to build a new home-especially one that's custom-designed by an architect-for less than nine figures. With land prices soaring and the cost of materials skyrocketing, the average new-build luxury home starts at around $1.32 million, according to luxury home builder Bluestone Construction.
Eilert and Hiller were ultimately able to custom-build a modern, 1,650-square-foot house-with a yoga studio for Eilert-for about roughly $700,000, plus $200,000 for the land. Their architecture firm, the Raleigh-based firm in situ studio, usually designs larger, more expensive homes, according to in situ's Zach Hoffman. To do the project for Eilert and Hiller's budget, "we had to be crafty. It was like a puzzle," Hoffman said. "There's gamesmanship involved."
No hallways
Eilert and Hiller, a 66-year-old retired executive for an electronics company, decided a few years ago that they wanted to downsize from their 3,000-square-foot house in Chapel Hill and spend more time in Europe. The plan was to keep a smaller home in North Carolina where they could spend a few months a year.
In 2020, they found the site where they wanted to build, buying a ranch house next door to friends on a quiet, tree-lined street 2 miles from downtown Raleigh and tearing it down. There was a 48-inch-wide red oak tree on the property that they wanted to design the new house around.
They started construction on the new two-bedroom, two-and-a-half-bathroom house in February 2023.
A major factor in keeping costs was sticking almost entirely to the footprint of the old house, said Hoffman. They did add several hundred square feet, including the yoga studio. But rather than expand the concrete foundation, they put the extra space on steel helical piers, which were positioned to avoid damaging the root system of the oak tree; keeping the tree was a nonnegotiable for Eilert and Hiller.
To keep square footage down, there are no hallways in the house, said Hoffman. "The driving principle was, 'how do we get as much house as we can into the footprint?'"
The yoga room doubles as a party space, with a disco ball hanging from the ceiling, and the guest room also serves as an office.
The closet systems come from IKEA. The powder room is tiny, with barely room to turn around. Because of these savings, Eilert and Hiller were able to include materials they wanted, including tiles from Italy and white oak floors.
On the exterior of the house, they saved tens of thousands of dollars by using fiber cement panels that come in 4-by-12-foot sheets. That allowed them to install 10-foot windows without making horizontal cuts in the siding, which in turn gave the house 10-foot ceilings. The width of the rooms was determined by the size of the home's six skylights rather than by custom-sizing skylights to fit into the rooms.
'A hard moment'
A difficult compromise for Eilert and Hiller was giving up a garage, where they had planned to store their cars while in Europe. But including a garage would have put the primary bedroom and bathroom on the second floor, adding several hundred thousand dollars to the project. Instead, they eliminated the second floor and put the primary bedroom and bathroom on the ground floor, where the garage would've been. The cars will be stored in the driveway. "That was a hard moment," said Hiller. "But we made the right decision. We got carried away."
Eilert said the amount of time they spent making sure everything was done correctly was frustrating-if they were to do it again, they would read the architect's specs before the project started so they could flag when something wasn't being done most efficiently. And they'd be more careful about picking a contractor that aligned with their way of doing things-specifically, one who would work on a fixed-price basis, which sets a price for the project up front.
Finally, the couple finished a list of items themselves, with their own hands, including the tracking for curtains, some electrical work and lighting installments. "There were things that we knew that if we wanted them done to our standards, we would have to do it ourselves," said Hiller.